International Work Placements: Developing Intercultural Skills?

Abstract

Intercultural skills are generally defined in relation to having a positive and respectful emotional response to cultural difference. However, what this actually means is difficult to define (Deardorff, 2006;Griffith et al., 2016), and consequently, takes various guises: intercultural literacy, global citizenship, international mindedness, to name but a few. In the critical social sciences, intercultural skills are often conceptualized, either explicitly or implicitly, through the lens of cosmopolitanism and transnationalism (see, e.g. Hannerz, 1996;Caruana, 2014).

Working towards Mobility

“…Among the benefits to emerge are intercultural skills, alongside formal learning, emphasising the value of living in other societies (see Cranston et al, 2021).…”

“…'Work' itself is no escape, given the endemic precarity that seems to have enveloped young people's employment, especially skilled and highly qualified professions. Points of labour market entry become semi-permanent liminal spaces rather than temporary staging posts on the path to something better, and for mobile workers, attributes such as interculturality become diluted to a point of meaninglessness (Cranston et al, 2021). Young professionals themselves become complicit in their marginalization through representing themselves as idealized neo-liberal archetypes, both in the workplace and in representations of their value; a valuation that is expressed in concrete form on their CVs (Filippi et al, 2021).…”